Competition is strong already, though. The Nielsen company proves it again by showing how much data use is going up even as data prices are going way, way down. The cost per megabyte is down over 40% over the last year alone, Nielsen says, going from $0.14 to $0.08.

We certainly wouldn’t jail RIM’s bosses if RIM infringed on Dolby’s patents. Why not? The civil courts work just fine to protect intellectual property. Criminalization is an unnecessary and dangerous expansion of government that picks favorites without actually improving the protection of rights in America.

Another dangerous act that would reduce the rights of inventors in America is the America Invents Act. I support Dana Rohrabacher in his efforts to lead the fight against that bad bill, which would change patent law so that the first person to invent an idea would no longer get the patent. The first person (or mega patent mill) to file the patent wins, regardless of whoever actually did the work first. Apparently it’s good because they do it this way in socialist Europe. Yeah, right.